Complicity in Discourse and Practice

Jef Verschueren is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the University of Antwerp and Secretary General of the International Pragmatics Association

• PROLOGUE ONE — IN SOCIETY Terror and complicity Ideas, influence, and power Politics – and where it’s gone Derailed reflexivity Enlightened condescension Walls and borders Of tongues ordinary and sublime Identity Political respect Solidarity TWO — AT THE UNIVERSITY Winners and losers An academic cytokine storm Totalitarianism light THREE — THROUGH THE MEDIA The information funnel Reflexivity on display Info on demand Asocial media RECAP — SHARING RESPONSIBILITY PROSPECT — AN ECOLOGY OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE?

"This informative and illuminating book in its entirety is worth recommendation to a wide readership keen to analyze and understand political discourses in troubled times" - Guodong Jiang' and Yingying Zheng, Journal of Language and Politics"Complicity in discourse and practice is written by a senior researcher in the field of pragmatics, refelcting on problems arising from the context of his academic research. That gives it great value, not only for that particular field but also for researchers old and young from related disciplines who have been working on the relationships between language and meaning, society and politics, wrestling at interfaces between academic research and social activism." - Bob Hodge, Western Sydney University